CR faces numerous challenges in its effort to provide quality education for its students.

 

Periathachoor

a.    Poverty Level. Our students live in severe poverty in rural villages. Most of our families live on a daily income of less than $1.25 per person, the internationally accepted definition for poverty. The majority of village homes are “semi pucca” with mud walls and thatched roofs. They do not have toilet facilities. Cooking is usually done inside the house with inadequate ventilation with fuels such as cow-dung, firewood or crop residue, exacerbating the risk of tuberculosis. Water must be transported from community wells. Electricity is limited, and inadequate for evening study.

 

b.     High Drop out Rate. While enrollment in Indian primary schools (grades 1-5) is increasing, less than 66% complete fifth grade. The percentage is even lower for girls, and poor students living in rural villages. Only 53% of students enroll in secondary school (grades 6-12).

 

c.      Poor Quality Education. It is true that Indian primary school enrollment has improved  and literacy rates are increasing. However, secondary school participation is low and unevenly distributed, particularly in poor rural areas. Learning achievements in both primary and secondary schools are low. Teacher absenteeism is high. On any given day, 25% of teachers in rural government schools are absent, and among those present only half are teaching. Class supplies are extremely limited. Instruction is heavily dependent on wrote memorization, and student intimidation. Corporal punishment is used on a regular basis.

 

d.     Limited Parental Assistance. India has 22% of the world’s population and 46% of the world’s illiterates. Out of the 29 districts in Tamil Nadu, the Villupuram District ranks 28th in literacy. 64.48% of males and only 53% of the women are literate. Consequently, parents cannot provide their children with the help they need to succeed academically. They have limited knowledge of the opportunities that are available outside their villages and can provide limited guidance for their children.

 

ATOM on Indiegogo!

Communities Rising has launched its ATOM|Art To Many project on Indiegogo, the world’s largest online funding platform.

We have 45 days to raise $10,000 for our art education program that will help us place art into the hands of 1000 of our children.

Help us reach our goal today on Indiegogo.

City Kid Chronicles: From East Village to, uh, Actual Village

For the past few years, Sam, Srilekha, and I have all been living in New York, a place where the word “village” refers to a kind of cultural hamlet, a neighborhood with a certain self-conscious style and character. The West Village has its French bistros and handbag boutiques and narrow ivy-wrapped brick apartments, the East Village has its laced-up leather and its vegan organic noodle joints.

In the West Village, you can go to your local greenmarket to buy milk that comes in a glass bottle printed with the name of an upstate farm in antique lettering. In the village of Vikravandi, Tamil Nadu, you can walk out of the kitchen to the organic farm in the backyard and milk a cow that you thought was male until you found yourself tugging at its udders. You can take tamarind from the tamarind tree and eggplant from the eggplant bush and dal from the lentil vine and make dosas and sambhar for dinner, under the discriminating eye of Velangani, the masterchef auntie who cooks in the kitchen. You’ve got a Discovery Channel on your front verandah, where you can watch the entire cycle of life and death in insect form (it appears to be bug-breeding season these days in Vikravandi). There’s a red-mouthed guinea hen who wanders in and out of the house and attacks if you reach for the eggs in its nest. People walk and work barefoot.

In the daytime, men in lunghis bike down the road balancing unlikely quantities of iron wire on the tops of their heads. At night, when the candles burn down, men and women carry cots from their palm-thatched concrete houses and relocate outside to sleep where it’s cooler. When you meet somebody new, they’ll ask you, “What’s your name?” and “What do you do?” and then, invariably, “Have you eaten?”

And by "milking," I mean watching a pro do most of it in 10 minutes and then awkwardly struggling with the cow on my own for another 10 minutes.

Dosa-making with Velangani.

I saw a lifestyle, a pace, a set of everyday rituals that I’ve never seen before. So I was excited to make videos with our students, because the topics of their videos were things I was curious to know: What’s your village like? Your school? Daily routine?

Here are two of the videos they came up with:

 

1) Our Home

Interview poker-faces.

Meet the students of St. Peter Paul Home for Disabled Children, a government-aided residential school in Mugaiyur, Tamil Nadu. In this video, they tour us around their school and speak about the difficulties they’ve faced as handicapped students in rural Tamil Nadu, their experiences finding a community at St. Peter Paul, and their ambitions for the future. Plus, they’ll show you their singing and dancing chops (which, frankly, put mine to shame. When they asked me to show them my dance moves, I changed the subject.)

Link to video here: http://vimeo.com/30616854

 

2) One Day in My Life

4th-grade hooligans.

They may appear pint-sized, but the 4th- and 5th-class kids of St. Antony’s Primary School are very busy people–and are capable of offering PBS-documentary-worthy reenactments of a day in the life of a primary school hooligan.

Link to video here: http://vimeo.com/30557432